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There are some funny X issues in Fedora 9 GOLD. You will probably end up needing to specify a "Modes" line to your video card section in xorg.conf. This is the price you pay for bleeding edge. Hopefully it will work for you, but X is a bit funky until you tweak it just right.

New features comes with new bugs. The latest Xserver has a much improved architecture in certain areas. If you have to use modelines, then you are just working around a bug, autodetection usually works fine.

Edited 2008-05-14 10:10 UTC

It's awesome that you manage to confuse both X with Linux and Fedora with Linux.
I haven't had to use modelines since, uh, 2002 and then only because I was using a Sun sync-on-green monitor with an Intel PC.

Yeah, and Windows detected my 24" LCD using its native resolution without the need for the manufacturer supplied inf file.
Oh wait, both Vista and XP used the default 1024x768 resolution; Fedora nv drivers worked just fine at 1920x1200x60 - so did the nVidia binary driver - should I assume that both XP and Vista still struggle with the basics?

Sadly enough OSNews doesn't support "-10 flamebait/trolling"...

- Gilboa

Edited 2008-05-17 04:24 UTC

I'm running accelerated fglrx against 2.6.25 on Frugalware as we speak, so there must be fixes/workarounds.

Indeed, the problem isn't only with the kernel, Fedora 9 comes with xorg 1.5 (not final btw), the ABI changed and nvidia and ATI closed drivers don't work.

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/rpm.livna.org_repositories_for_Fedor...

On another note, I have to admit that I lied. Last November on this list I wrote:

> Fedora 8 will be the last release livna will be offering its add-on
> packages for. But don't despair, the future is bright: The Livna
> contributers are busy working together with the guys behind dribble and
> freshrpms to offer a unified repository in the future bringing you
> games, multimedia software and other tools from a single source. This
> merged repository is called "RPM Fusion"; you can find more information
> about it at http://rpmfusion.org/
>
> Interested? Want to help? Then don't hesitate and subscribe to the
> developers mailing lists at
> http://lists.rpmfusion.org/mailman/listinfo/rpmfusion-developers
> or meet us in the #rpmfusion channel on freenode.

That in fact didn't happen, but is about to happen soon; the whole idea got delayed as we had lots of interested packagers but a lack of infrastructure and people willing to work on infrastructure bits. That slowed things down a whole lot, but we have most bits in place now and will start soon. The plan is to migrate users automatically over from Livna to RPM Fusion slowly once the repos are available.

Bye!
Thorsten Leemhuis

thanks for the info

Along with flash, yum install libflashsupport. If you are on x86_64 you will need libflashsupport.i386 nspluginwrapper.i386

KDE4 shots. What can be done with that panel these days? Can it be moved? Reduced in size? Made something other than solid black?

P.S. In the screen shots, the cashew is still there. Can it be changed in any way?

Edited 2008-05-13 19:24 UTC

Can I take the "mod down" as meaning "no" to all the above at this time?

I'm currently running opensuse 10.3 and kde 4.0.4 packages from the build service, and I can do all of those: create multiple panels, change their appearance (new themes pop regularly on kde-look.org), and resize it (although you can't for example have a horizontal panel that doesn't cover the entire width of your monitor, you can only adjust height with horizontal panel, and width with a vertical one).

openSUSE does backport more things than are in the original kde 4.0.4 packages, but there you have it, at least on openSUSE you can today have stable packages with all those features included.

(And finally, I guess it's easier to press + or - than to give a straight answer).

Thank you for the helpful response, Ivo. :-)

4.0.4 panels can be moved and sized. (At least on my Fedora rawhide machine)
I haven't tried changing the color, but even if it doesn't, it should land soon.

4.0.x is still, at best, a preview of 4.1.
Hopefully 4.1 will land on time.

- Gilboa

1. There is a live CD option you can use which will fit on a 1 Gig flash drive.

2. Fedora updates packages with fixes as they become available. Security updates happen quite regularly. You don't have to wait until the next version to get updates. You can use the built in package kit update GUI or open a shell and type 'yum update'

That of course completely depends on the packages you need. I can't exclude there is some specific goodness that you like to use on CD 5. Lightweight, does that mean no GUI? Try to install the first CD and download the rest you need from the Yum repos you can enable when installing.



There are lots of updates all the time in Fedora Land. Kernels too. This abundance, in turn, irritates other users.

Thanks to those who replied...

I guess what I am asking is, "will the installation complete with just installer CD #1, without asking me to insert another CD?" I'd rather not use the Live CD, because I need to install it on some old slow computers as well, and I like to customize my package selection. I depend on a WiFI connection for internet access, so I won't have that available until my system is installed to the HD. I want to install a custom lightweight Gnome system without most of the default packages and clutter.

So Fedora does generally update desktop program packages (i.e. office suites, web browsers, media players) as they become available?

IIRC, the default selection is two CD's and yes Fedora does tend to update to newer releases of many applications as they become available that includes new features and not just security/bug fixes.

You mean this bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439386 ?


And to rklrkl, Livna is already done can be found here:
http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

Edited 2008-05-14 06:05 UTC

Er, no, it isn't. Firstly, they haven't officially announced it on their home page and secondly, although I'd already downloaded the repo RPM you mentioned, it does *not* have the ATI/Nvidia RPMs. See the 64-bit F9 tree for example:

http://livna-dl.reloumirrors.net/fedora/9/x86_64/

No sign of fglrx/nvidia stuff in there at all, which was the point I was making in my original post. BTW, I wandered into the Livna development tree and got all the equivalent F9 bits for fglrx that I had for F8 - I then installed them, but it just doesn't work (screen flickers like crazy at the console and never fires X up). I think they must have issues with the kernel/fglrx combo in F9.

Both nVidia and ATI/AMD have yet to release X-server 1.5 compatible drivers.
I'm guessimating that nVidia will release a new beta driver within a week or so. (No idea about ATI/AMD).

Having said all that (and even though I'm using the nVidia binary drivers on a large number of machines) - this is the price of using closed source binary drivers: If the manufacturer fails to deliver working drivers on time, you're essentially screwed - and Fedora, rightfully in their perspective, refuse to be held hostage by the hands of proprietary driver developers. (Especially when the option of OSS drivers is always open)

... Hopefully, with AMD opening all the design documents, it's just a matter of time until ATI/AMD OSS drivers will be viable option for those who require fast 3D on their machine. (I for one, am willing to pay twice as much to get the same performance - but use an OSS driver instead of proprietary ones)

- Gilboa

I hope you file bug reports on some of the issues you are facing in there. Livna cannot package drivers that don't exist. Proprietary drivers usually play catch-up to major releases and associated ABI changes. That's going to take sometime. Alternatively Intel cards for example work out of the box since they are maintained as part of Xorg upstream.

When you start using Fedora 9 you will most likely start to enjoy the perceivably better performance ( i do).

Both KDE and Gnome are running smooth. I have ubuntu installed on my laptop. And i'm tempted to install fedora 9 on it too.

Bug report this to fedora and xorg upstream. The point of the new Xserver architecture is that you shouldn't need to have a xorg.conf file at all, everything should be autodetected.

Should, and Do are two different things. Autodetection is *not* perfect, nor will it ever be, so why tempt fate?

Dave

And not due to deficiencies in the detection algorithms. Monitors lie about their capabilities and the manufacturers don't care. They just ship a driver disk (for Windows, of course) with the monitor to "fix" it. EDIDs were never more than a pleasant fantasy.

I've never seen someone use a installation disk for a monitor! I've seen generic monitors work perfectly fine on Windows at various resolutions other than default crappy ones.

I'm always funny why Linux guys just simply can't admit that Linux has some major issues that are not being fixed, and it seems there is no interest in fixing them. And we wonder why Linux isn't the desktop of the year, and never will be?

Dave

If you just have to have the drivers from nvidia.com, the stick to Fedora 8 until Nvidia releases them.

Thanks for the advice but that's not the point here.

Fedora, as far as I know, made no public statement about this fact that nvidia video cards/chips will not work. They announce the OS as finished and ready for consumption but it is not. It is using incomplete beta software including Firefox and X and these are two central applications to the OS. Also KDE is unstable and I'm not sure if that's KDE's fault or Fedora. I'm glad to blame Fedora because they included it and touted it as a main feature of the release.

Also, why are nvidia drivers mandatory to get X working? Even windows 3.1 will work in VGA mode, and so will WinNT, Win2K, WinXP and I presume even the much despised of them all, Vista.

This OS is not ready for consumption by anyone who isn't technically inclined and patient. And by that, I say that while it is potentially great, it is an epic fail.

VGA mode people, use it! It's a standard for about 20 years now.

You know it's bleeding edge, why use it then?!?! I'm running the rawhide version of sulphur for ages. And with every update it became more reliable. For now it's the best Fedora version I ever have seen.

BTW you cannot blame Fedora for the bad NVIDIA attitude, if they opened up there specifications there was not a problem at all. I'm currently using the 2d driver and it's oke for now, but I hope NVIDIA will release there 3d drivers soon!

Debian Sid is cutting edge as well, and it doesn't screw things up like this. This has always been the problem with sticking to release dates, rather than a release when ready methodology.

Dave

Obviously you were able to make Fedora display some sort of video output, since you are commenting on the stability of its KDE. So you were able to use VESA mode some how. "VGA mode" as you suggest would just leave you at 1024x768 with 16 colors, which would probably be a little disappointing for you.

Fedora never claims to be the most stable, easiest to use OS. It's claims to fame are firstly to be a completely free and open source OS (no NVidia binary blobs will ever be included) and secondly to be on the bleeding edge. That bleeding edge of open source is sometimes very painful. The NVidia drivers not working are not exactly Fedora's fault, if NVidia had opened at least their 2D specs the community would have excellent open source driver support for these cards. Yes it is a little irritating that proprietary video drivers from NVidia and ATI are currently unavailable, but that is not entirely Fedora's fault. The Fedora project has never officially supported these drivers and instead relies upon third party packagers such as livna.

Regarding the KDE environment's instability, it is widely known that KDE 4 is still in need of a lot of work. It is progressing quickly, but I think it is very telling that Fedora is the only major distro currently shipping it as their default KDE. Even OpenSUSE isn't ready to ship it as the exclusive KDE option in their upcoming OpenSUSE 11.

I'm a Gnome user personally and I find Fedora 9 to be one of the fastest, most up to date, and most complete Gnome distros available today. If you have any issues with it, report the bugs to the Fedora team, they are usually very timely with updates and bug fixes.

Maybe because it isn't true that "nvidia video cards/chips will not work" with FC9? My Nvidia card works with FC9 using nv or nouveau, indeed I'm using it with nvidia closed drivers. Only GLX doesn't work, but hey, you have the same problem in any distro if you don't install the closed driver! Anyway, as many people said, it is impossible for Redhat to modify a closed driver.

"Fedora still doesn't support 3D in nvidia cards" is a very far from "nvidia video cards/chips will not work in FC9".

That's exactly what I'm saying: all I got is initlevel 3, a text login. Typing 'startx' does not work. No GUI login of any kind. That's what I said, it didn't work.

I got 2d acceleration working by searching the internet and running a beta nvidia 173.08 driver. But even doing that took me a few hours because there were other problems, like trying to get the file. Hard to browse to a web site if I have no gui and I don't have the exact url to the file.

Every reply to my previous post got it wrong. Basic standard VGA mode on my nvidia card did not work. Instead for 'bleeding edge' I got a 1970's state of the art, textual login prompt.

You might think I criticize Linux but I mean to do so only to point out that this is a huge kind of failure I repeatedly get with linux because X is so bad at self configuring for even a simple bare bones VGA login. I've used quite a few linux distributions over the years and every single one gives me hurdles with X.

Forget the nvidia driver issue, it's a bit irrelevent. Give me a reasonable GUI login, and not a 1970s mainframe login and I'd be a little happier.

The average Joe Bob farmer and Jane soccer mom would throw the disc away when confronted with that login. Oh and yes, it was the 'nv' driver and it didn't work. I have no idea why, and I wasn't given an alternative during any step in the installation process.

And even then when I did install the beta nvidia driver, X burps out a huge error message about ABI. The Fedora forums have posts from other people getting this error and a user-created solution. No patch is coming, so far. What a waste of time just trying to get the very basics working. Bleeding edge my *ss.